


Garden Stills

by Anonymous



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Character Study, Family, Flowers, Fluff, Fluffcember, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26525140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Sam's household is like her parents' garden—beautiful and cold. Or so she believes, until she's brought onto a little path of rediscovery.
Relationships: Ida Manson & Sam Manson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19
Collections: Anonymous





	Garden Stills

It was an unholy hour of the morning, and Sam was not in bed.

She knew she should’ve been more careful yesterday. A slip of her tongue, and her parents had caught wind of her lack of Saturday plans. It’d given them the permission to swing into her room and whip her blanket from her dark, warm cocoon, before ushering her stumbling form into the outside world.

It led to her now: slumped over a chilly metal bench in the Manson’s garden, a grandiose plot of land sprawled before the entrance of her family’s mansion. Her parents were bustling about the campaluna bellflowers—new arrivals, they’d said—which needed to be planted and displayed, and who better to show it off to first than their own daughter?

The morning fog rolled into the premises, pulling Sam’s mind into a tired lull. Admittedly, it was a pleasant spring day. Had it been a better time and place, maybe she would’ve been interested in the calendulas blossoming in their ornamented pots or the lavender that had sprung up in its bushes. But she’d stayed up past midnight on a Skype call with her friends, and was now paying the price. She couldn’t care less for flowers that only her parents guarded over like dragons over their gold.

A short nap, she thought muddily as her eyes drifted closed, just for a bit.

“I told you to be careful moving them!” shrieked her mother.

“I am, I swear. They came like this!”

“Oh, so the botanist tore out the flowers she sold to us?”

Sam’s eyelids peeled open, and she raised her head and squinted blurrily at the two adults five feet before her. Her father was in his overalls, an unusual look for the prim and proper man, kneeling before the main gate. A garden shovel was struck into the soil next to a line of freshly rooted flowers, its handle facing skywards. Her mother stood by him, in a sundress and slippers. She jabbed a long finger at the plants, and again at him, prompting him turn around and snap at her, and it was then Sam knew they would squabble til noon.

This is a blessing, she decided, settling back into the cool seat and closing her eyes again.

“A good morning, doncha think?” said a cheery voice.

Her eyes shot open. She glared at the pale gray sky, then turned her scowl to the person next to her.

From her wheelchair, Grandma Ida chuckled, a knitted blanket draped across her lap.

Sam rubbed her face. “It’s like nobody wants me to sleep today.”

Grandma rolled her wheelchair around to face her. A quirk to her lips betrayed the mischief Sam knew lay beneath the face of a kindly old woman. “They were hoping you could help them out, you know.”

Sam snorted, nodding her head at the quarreling pair. “I don’t think they even remember I exist.”

A noisy sigh left Grandma’s lips. “Just as well. I wanted to show you something.”

“Show me what?”

Grandma pressed a button on the remote built into her chair’s armrest, then she rolled in a U-turn before heading back along the pathway, stones and gravel grinding under the rubber of her wheels. “Come along, bubleh.”

Sam glanced back at her parents, then got up and followed her grandmother. Neither looked back.

They went back into the shade, but took a winding road around the mansion, where the gravel gradually transformed into a dusty path inlaid with little red slates. They remained steady under the weight of her boots. She missed the way her soles ground against them, and she realized it had been some time since she had come here. In fact, ever since she’d begun helping her friends out with ghost-hunting, she had stayed in her house less and less.

Ahead, the path, initially shadowed by the overarching foliage above their heads, opened into a small back garden. Standing at the entrance, Sam took it all in.

It was more or less how she remembered it. The wheelbarrow they never used sat in a corner with shears and trowles laid within. But where gentle bougainvillea once dusted the grass beneath them with purplish-pink petals, their bushes no longer bloomed. The grasses grew to her mid-shin, entangled with nettle, with wildflowers.

This place was silent; she could not hear the rumbling of cars out on the main road, nor the voices of her parents arguments. They existed out front.

Grandma wheeled herself towards the center of the garden, where a round glass table rimmed with metal stood on three curved legs, surrounded by three rattan chairs. “I cleaned up this place a little.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes.” Grandma’s chuckle was blithe, and she slotted herself into an empty spot where a chair should have been. She brushed a couple of leaves and twigs off their surfaces with a wrinkled hand. “It’s still a mess. But nothing wrong with a bit of chaos.”

Sam stepped lightly onto the grass patch, picking her way towards the table. Twigs and browning leaves crunched beneath her feet, sounding loud to her ears, even almost foreign, though she must have walked across plenty of leaf litter in Amity’s parks before.

An assortment of flowers rested on the table. Wildflowers plucked and scattered, and beside them lavenders lay. Long leaves curled around them, and they were glossy and fresh. In the center of them, bellflowers sat, each of their five petals a vibrant violet-blue.

“Why are these here?” Sam picked one up, running her fingers across their delicate exteriors, and found herself grinning. She pulled out the chair nearest to her grandmother and tucked herself in. “It was you?”

Grandma Ida cast her a genial smile, selecting a pale lavender from the pile. “Like I said, I was doing a bit of cleaning, you know, but this old body can’t do much these days. Picked a few flowers, they don’t serve much purpose just sitting there looking pretty, but I found these lovely blue ones here.” She patted them twice. Leaning her head in, her eyes crinkled as she lowered her voice. “Right here, waiting for me where I’d gathered my stalks.”

Sam laughed. It echoed through the garden. “Mom and Dad are gonna be so mad!”

Her grandmother shook her head. “At who? The botanist?”

“That’s _evil_.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Grandma held up a long green stalk in the light, squinting as she pinched an end between her fingers. She lay it flat against the end of another stalk, curled them around each other and tied them like a ribbon, finally pulling both ends gently until the little knot tightened and held.

Sam watched her. “What are you doing?”

“Making a flower crown.”

“What? Why?”

“I can’t possibly put these back in their pots. Such a waste!” Grandma bopped her on the head with the extended stalk, and Sam reactively startled. “Now follow me.”

They worked quietly. About them, crickets chirped in the glow of the dawn, an accompaniment to the soft shuffling of flowers across the table. Sam picked out a daisy, smoothing a few petals out between her fingers and shaking away the loose ones. It was a strange motion at first, but after joining the first three stalks, her fingers knew what to do. They pulled the little buds so they faced the outside of the crown, and she twirled the stems around each other so they formed a sturdy base.

By the time she was done, the sun was in full bloom. Amity Park must have woken up, though the city sounds were distant. From within the little backyard garden, Sam raised her crown to the light, admiring the way the blues, purples and white lay vibrant against the ring of stems.

Grandma Ida had long since finished her crown, her fingers nimble despite their age. She put down the second one she had begun, picked up her first, and set it securely atop her gray head. Sam gingerly did the same.

Her grandmother beamed. “Try not to let your parents catch you with this, alright?”

Sam grinned back, her dark hair now adorned. There would be no trouble slipping this into her room, or even outside, if she wished, just like any other ectoweapon she had procured for her friends. How would they react, if she wore this out to meet them later?

She found she didn’t mind. It was crafted by her, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Alexa_Piper for beta-ing an early draft of this fic. :') Written for Fluffcember 2019's day 2 prompt, "flower crown". Comments are much appreciated, and thank you for reading.


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